


a new sun pounding

by traveller



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Future Fic, Original Character(s), Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-05
Updated: 2012-12-05
Packaged: 2017-11-20 08:59:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/583572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/traveller/pseuds/traveller
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>“Noor Khan, Chris Argent. Chris, Noor.” Jake gestures between them with the H&K he’s holding. “Thanks for coming.” </em> </p>
<p>  <em>“Watch where you’re pointing that thing,” the woman says in a crisp accent, knocking the gun away with the back of her hand before reaching out to shake Chris’s. “Nice to meet you.” </em></p>
            </blockquote>





	a new sun pounding

_But stay. Take care. Your hour will soon elapse._  
—Agha Shahid Ali

“Noor Khan, Chris Argent. Chris, Noor.” Jake gestures between them with the H&K he’s holding. “Thanks for coming.” 

“Watch where you’re pointing that thing,” the woman says in a crisp accent, knocking the gun away with the back of her hand before reaching out to shake Chris’s. “Nice to meet you.” 

“You’re not from around here,” Chris says as he lets go, and feels instantly stupid. 

She lifts one eyebrow. “Neither are you,” she points out, and walks back to her Rover. 

“It’s better when you don’t talk,” Jake says, holstering his weapon and looking after her. “The silent, mysterious thing works so much better for you.”

“Fuck off,” Chris says, stuffing his hands in the pockets of his vest and turning away from the wind. Across the clearing, Noor’s hair blows into her face and she twists it back into a tight knot before slinging a rifle across her back. 

“That’s an M85?” he asks by way of apology when they’re tramping the narrow trail up the mountain several minutes later. 

They are a team of six, and there is something vicious stalking the Sawtooth Wilderness near Stanley, something Jake hasn’t been able to find or stop on his own. Jake Alexander was once a tracker for the Argents; about nine years ago he’d had a difference of opinion with Gerard and went back home to Pocatello. Chris had never asked what the argument was about, but these days he thinks he can guess. 

“Yeah,” Noor answers. There’s a long pause filled with the hunters’ breaths, with the crunch of boots on the trail. “It was my dad’s,” she adds after a bit. 

Apology accepted. Chris nods. “Mine’s a family business too.” Is. Was. It strikes him, as it does from time to time now, that he may well be the last of his line. He puts down the shiver to the bitter wind. 

Noor is dressed for the trail in light layers and well-worn hikers, and Chris regrets his heavier BDUs and tac boots after the first mile of ascent. This is not really his territory, not just in terms of geographical delimitation; while he’s done his fair share of running through the woods, he is most accustomed to urban hunts, to alleys and tunnels, tracking over concrete, steel and glass. 

“It’s not quite like that,” she says after a moment. “I’m from Bandipore, in Kashmir. My father was in the war, when he was young.” She shrugs. “And hunting is guerilla warfare. The skills are the same.” 

Victoria had been impressed by the Argent name, the legacy, the power; she had been easy to woo, at least in that regard. He half-smiles, thinking of her, of those early days, then the expression fades as he wonders why his mind has taken that track, to memories of romance. He shakes his head. 

“You disagree?” she asks, that eyebrow back up. 

“No, no, I just.” He gestures at his temple. “Thought of something. No, you’re right, probably. I’m not the best person to judge.” 

Noor gives him a long, assessing look, then shrugs again. She takes a tube of something out of her pocket and rubs it on her lips; it makes them shine in the sun. Chris slows his pace, and lets her walk on ahead. 

The rest of the group is Kenny Landry from Louisiana, Bobby Alvarez from New York, Buck Carson from North Carolina; Chris doesn’t know any of them aside from by reputation, although he’s met Alvarez a few times. He’d heard of the sniper named Khan, too, although it hadn’t clicked till he’d seen Noor pick up her rifle. They’re pretty much the best of the independent contractors, a hunter’s dream team. Chris seesaws between wondering why Jake called him, and just being glad for something to do.

They make camp an hour or so before sundown, about a quarter mile from where Jake had found signs of a den. His working theory is that they’re dealing with a werewolf gone feral; it happens, sometimes, too much time spent in its animal form and it stops bothering to shift back, it loses whatever sense of humanity it may have had. Some don’t start out with much to begin with. 

It’s killed eight people, including an eleven year old boy. 

The plan is to come in loud and present a clear threat; three of the attacks were on campers, three on regular hunters. Jake said he might’ve put it down to a particularly cranky grizzly, or even that the attacks were coincidental, a cluster of unrelated, random events: one grizzly attack, three cougar attacks, an overfed couple of black bears getting maul-happy while going after snacks. But after the first three deaths the state fish and game department sent officers out, and the first one didn’t come back. The officer sent to find the first didn’t come back. Jake was the one who ended up dragging the remains of both the bodies home. 

It identified the threats and eliminated them, Jake had said on the phone. If it is a grizzly, it’s a goddamn calculating one.

It’s a waning, gibbous moon, eerily bright on the dark horizon. The wind is sharper at this elevation, and Chris hunkers down by the fire, accepts a nip of whiskey from Carson’s flask. Noor doesn’t say anything, but she and Jake are the only ones who seem comfortable, who don’t look like the thin, bitter air is slowly killing them; she glances around at the rest of the group and catches Chris watching. He inclines his head, and she shakes hers. He’s not sure, exactly, what they just communicated. 

She pulls a watch cap down over her ears and takes a nap on the bare ground; no more than a half hour passes then she’s on her feet again, pacing the perimeter of their camp while she eats a power bar. Eventually she finds what she’s looking for, and signals to Jake. 

“I’ll be up there,” she says, pointing to a vaguely flat patch of ground about 60 yards up the trail. It’s shadowed by boulders and brush, there’s almost no way to approach it from behind. It’s a good perch.

“Try not to shoot any of us, baby,” Jake drawls, and Noor holds up one finger, crooking it like she’s pulling a trigger. 

“I’ve got my safety on, baby,” she answers, deadpan. The guys laugh. Chris can’t help a smile. 

When it happens, it happens fast, hours of waiting brought to a sudden brutal end. It’s Landry, taking the watch on the southeastern side of the camp; it’s a howl and a flash of yellow eyes in the firelight, and Landry’s scream cut short. There’s the crack of Noor’s old Parker Hale, and another howl from the southwest. It’s not just one feral werewolf, it’s a fucking pack. 

The fight is a blur. No bows, no heavy artillery, there’s no way for Chris to get in close enough for blades and he has to make do with his sidearms. He ends up back to back with Jake while Alvarez fights with Carson, trying to lay enough fire into the bastards that they can’t bite. He gets one down, and it’s close, too close; Carson goes next, blood spraying dark across the rock, and somehow through it all Chris can hear the steady, implacable sound of Noor firing, pulling the bolt, firing again. One by one, the wolves fall. 

“None of those were the alpha,” Alvarez says through ragged breaths, leaning over with his forearms braced on his thighs. “Where the fuck is the alpha?”

Jake squats over Landry’s body, drawing the eyes closed and shaking his head. “I don’t know.” 

Chris loads in fresh clips and racks both guns, letting his arms hang ready at his sides. His blood is roaring in his ears as he surveys the clearing. The animals are reverting to pale bodies, just barely covered in rags. In the firelight, the waning moon’s light, he thinks he can see some family resemblance--blond hair, strong noses, stocky, powerful bodies. There’s two males and two females, thirties, early forties, he’d guess, and three out of the four have spreading black stains across their chests from Noor’s wolfsbane rounds. 

“Noor?” he calls, turning to look up the trail toward her perch, and it’s stupid, stupid, turning his back like that when they _just said_ , the alpha’s still out there. 

Chris hits the ground face first, the air rushing out of his lungs, his guns flying out of his grip. He feels the weight of the massive alpha on his back, smells the rotten meat stench of its breath; there’s shouting, there’s pistol fire, shotgun fire, there’s _crack. crack. crack._

He comes to with someone’s jacket under his head and the smell of burning flesh in his nose; he’s been moved away from the clearing, but it’s downwind as well as downhill. He sits up, touches his face and his fingers come away bloody. 

Noor crouches in front of him a moment later, holding out a handkerchief and a canteen. “You weren’t bitten,” she says quietly. “Just knocked in the head.” 

He soaks the handkerchief, draws it over his forehead and hisses when he finds the scrape over his brow. “You got it,” he says, not a question. He wets the cloth again, wipes the grit and blood from his eyes. 

She nods. “Older alpha female, probably the mother to the others. Jake thinks there are some unsolved maulings north of here that probably connect to this pack, judging from the state of them, they’ve been feral for a long time.” 

“Thanks,” Chris says, looking up at the fire, at Jake and Alvarez, backlit dark shapes pacing around it. “What about--” 

“The others won’t turn.” She doesn’t offer any more detail, and Chris doesn’t ask, and he doesn’t close his eyes either, because he knows what he’ll see. He stares uphill at the fire instead, keeping the wet handkerchief over his nose. If the smoke and smell are bothering Noor, she’s not letting it show. 

“We had to build the fire up rather a lot in order to take care of the bodies,” she adds, and he looks back at her. “We’ll almost certainly need to explain it at some point.” 

“Jake’s good with alibis,” Chris says, and to his surprise, Noor smiles. It’s transformative, she has dimples and laugh lines around her eyes, she has a slightly crooked front tooth. 

“You’re concussed,” she says, and gives his shoulder a push. “Rest a bit, we’ve still got a long night ahead.” 

It does take all night to burn the bodies of the werewolves, especially with the wind, and they have to take turns gathering deadfall to keep the fire going. They start their descent at first light, but it takes hours to pick their way back down the mountain with Carson and Landry on makeshift litters. Chris insists on doing his fair share of the work, despite the headache screaming behind his eyes, and Noor keeps _looking_ at him. No one speaks unless it’s necessary. 

The clearing at the trailhead is mercifully empty except for their own vehicles; they lay Carson and Landry out in the back of Jake’s truck, covered with a blanket. Chris scrapes his knuckles over his eyes and offers to help take care of things with the authorities, but Jake waves him off. 

“I’ll handle it,” he promises, squaring his shoulders. “You guys need to get down the road.”

Chris remembers reading somewhere that mountain climbers don’t call a climb a success when everyone reaches the summit; it’s not a success until, unless, everyone comes back down again. 

The goodbyes are brief. Backslapping from Alvarez and Jake, a cool handshake from Noor. 

“Thank you,” he tells her, and means it. 

“You’re welcome,” she says, and he’s pretty sure she means it too. 

He drives down to Ketchum, gets a room at the Clarion and stands in the shower until his hands start to wrinkle, until the taste of ashes finally washes out of his mouth. His stomach growls but he can’t bring himself to eat; just crawls into the bed and sleeps, deep and dark, unmoving. 

The sun is down again when he wakes; his body is aching but his head feels clear. He makes coffee in the tiny machine, gets dressed and sends a text to Allison. _Job’s done, couple of losses. I’ll call you when I get home._ A moment later he gets a single letter in reply. _K._

The job is done, he should pull his shit together and get on the road. It’s a ten hour drive if the weather holds, twelve if it doesn’t, nine if he doesn’t give a fuck about the law or the conditions and only stops for fuel. 

A knock at the door forces the decision for him. He checks the spyhole with one hand on his gun, skin suddenly tight and prickling, and could collapse with relief when he sees Noor outside. She holds up a paper bag. “Room service,” she calls out, and he opens the door. 

“Didn’t expect to see you again,” he says, putting his gun back down on the nightstand. He doesn’t bother to ask how she’d found him. 

She shrugs, dropping down onto the floor and opening the bag. There’s four huge cheeseburgers, a box of steak fries, a bottle of wine and a tall bottle of water. “Mine,” she says, drawing two of the burgers and the water toward herself. “Yours.” She points to the rest, then grabs a fry. “To share,” she adds before stuffing it into her mouth. 

The wine is a cheap Shiraz with a screwtop. He fights a smile and finally lets it win once his back is turned; he grabs the two plastic cups from the bathroom counter and sits down opposite her. 

She shakes her head when he cracks open the bottle, reaches across their makeshift picnic to put her hand over one cup. “None for me, I just supposed you could use it.”

“You don’t drink?” he asks, splashing the other cup full. “No, you wouldn’t. You’re Muslim, right?”

When he glances up, she’s smiling. “Very good.” 

“Khan,” he says, unwrapping one of the burgers. “Like Genghis.” 

“At least you didn’t say like Star Trek.” 

Chris snorts, and takes a long sip of the wine; he can’t help the face he makes when it hits his tongue, or the grimace when he swallows. “That’s. Really fucking terrible,” he says, putting the cup down on the carpet. 

“How was I to know?” Noor’s eyes are bright, a half-smile on her face. 

“You tried,” he says, shaking his head. He puts the cup of wine down out of the way, and holds the other cup out. She pours it full of water with another hitch of her shoulders. 

“The label was pretty?” she offers, and Chris can’t, he just _can’t_ , the laugh bursts out of him against his will. 

It feels like he hasn’t laughed in years. 

He arranges himself to sit with his back against the the bedside, he can’t see the windows but he can see the door and that’s good enough, he thinks. There’s a holster under the arm of the fleece jacket Noor’s still wearing, and she probably, probably, would cover his back. 

“This job was fucked up,” he says aloud, halfway through the second burger. Noor, sitting with her elbows on her knees, tilts her head, and Chris puts the food down, wipes his fingers on the thigh of his jeans. 

“It was,” she agrees, pushing a piece of hair back behind her ear. It’s in a sloppy topknot tonight, black locks escaping in every direction, but she still looks every bit as in-control as she did when she was lying on that ridge, staring down the rifle sights. 

“They were killers,” he says, more quietly. “Eight people that Jake knew of. A little kid.”

“I know.” Noor laces her fingers together, looks down at her hands and then back up at Chris. “May I tell you something?” 

He nods, sure, of course. He thinks that once you’ve spilled blood with someone that there are only a few boundaries left between you, he thinks that the space for secrets is narrowed to a sliver. But he’d believed that about his family too. 

“I’m a twin,” Noor says, and that wasn’t at all what he’d expected, but he nods again. 

“My brother, Anjum, was born almost ten minutes before me, and he often treated me like a baby sister. He was protective, and annoying, and always leaving me behind. We weren’t like some twins, with secret languages or sharing each other’s thoughts, but we were very close. And our parents did their best to make sure that everything we had was equal.” Noor pauses, and bites at the cuticle on the middle finger of her right hand. 

“When we were seventeen, I wanted to go to university, and Anjum didn’t. We. Kashmir has been at war our whole lives. I wanted away from it. Anjum wanted to go to Pakistan and join the army. Our parents had been partisans when they were young, he said he wanted to carry on their fight. I said what kind of family business is war?”

Chris meets her gaze, but doesn’t comment; she seems to search his face for a moment. The heater in the room comes on with a click. 

“The longest we’d ever been apart was a few days, but when I left for university, I didn’t see my brother again for over three years.” Noor bites her finger again. “Part of that was my fault, or my choice, anyway. I went to London, and getting back to India was so expensive, and my parents had already put so much into getting me there in the first place...” She makes a gesture that could mean anything. “So the next time I went back was because my brother had been reported AWOL from the army. They’d contacted my parents to see if he’d gone home, but they said he hadn’t, and you know, I had just started my first job, I couldn’t really afford to go but I just, I just had a feeling that something was terribly wrong.” 

There are only a few ways this story can end, Chris thinks, there are only a few paths that lead a woman from India at seventeen, wanting nothing more than to go to college, to thirty-something and a hotel room in Idaho, eating cheeseburgers after a night of killing werewolves. 

Noor is watching his face again, and she inclines her head, acknowledging what she sees there. “You’re trying to guess what happened, which way it went. Was he killed by them? Yes. In a sense. He was bitten.”

“I’m sorry.” The words are out before he can stop them, and he means it, but sincerity never made it less grating to hear when it was his turn. She nods though, an almost fond turn to her mouth. 

“Thank you.” She takes a sip of water, her gaze turning distant for a moment before fixing back on Chris. “So, yes. Anjum was bitten, and by the time I got back to Bandipore, it was over. My brother had gone back home, and my parents had taken him in -- they lied to the authorities. And he killed them both before moving on to the girl he’d been dating before going to Pakistan, and her sister, and their parents as well.” 

There is something stark and beautiful about the lines of her face, set in resignation and old grief. Her lips compress for a moment, like a child about to cry. “And I should have been there,” she says. “I should have been there.” 

“For what?” Chris says, feeling a flash of anger. “So you could be dead too?” 

“No.” Noor shakes her head, for the first time her tone going sharp. “No, because I wasn’t there, someone else had to shoot my brother. That should’ve been my responsibility. If your dog goes mad, you don’t have your neighbor put it down. You stand for your family, you do it yourself.” 

It is in word, if not in meaning, close enough to his father’s sayings, close enough to proverbs he himself has told, that the hair stands up on his arms. 

“Is that why you do it?” he asks. 

“Why do _you_?” she counters. 

He smiles, and feels exhausted. “It’s the only thing I know how to do.” 

Noor draws a pin out of her hair; it’s bent too far open, and she works at bringing the wire together again, eyes on her fingers. “It was the Russian, that shot my brother. You know him?” 

“We’ve met.” Chris reaches for the cup of terrible wine, still sitting off to the side, and throws it back like a shot. There’s only one hunter that people call the Russian -- Anatoly Durov, a wiry, monkey-like man who makes up for his lack of stature with ruthless tenacity. Honorable, mostly. Not like that means shit anymore. 

“It took me a long time to find him.” Noor pulls the pin apart and then pinches it back together again. “But I was determined. People said Anjum had turned into a monster, but the body I saw was a man. But the way that his victims were brutalized could have only been done by a monster. An animal. So.” She blows out a breath, and shakes her head. “I suppose you’re wondering why I’m telling you this.” 

“A little,” Chris says honestly. “But you don’t seem like the kind of person who wouldn’t have a reason.” 

“That’s giving me a lot of credit,” she says with a wry smile. “No, I suppose... I just don’t hate them. I can’t hate them. Anatoly said that when my brother was bitten, if there’d been a strong wolf to help him, he mightn’t have become a killer. They don’t _have_ to become killers. It’s just... a terrible accident of circumstance. Of all the wolves I’ve killed in the past fifteen years, less than five hadn’t, if you bothered to look, had something go wrong that caused them to spill blood. I think true, conscienceless killers are as small a proportion of their population as it is of ours.” 

Chris looks down at the carpet, shifting a little; sitting on the floor is starting to bother his back. He scrubs his palm over his beard and shrugs. 

“Don’t you think,” Noor says softly, “that something very terrible must have happened to that pack, that family, to turn them into wild animals? How miserable they must have been.” 

He blinks, and rubs his face again. “I never gave much thought to motive,” he says, shaking his head. “Not until pretty recently.” 

“What happened?” Noor asks, and Chris can’t help a snort of disbelief. 

“Really?” he says. “You can’t expect me to believe that you didn’t hear.” 

“Hear what?” Noor cocks her head. “I live on the opposite side of the country, when I’m in this country at all; this is not my day job. Whilst this profession is full of gossip and rumor, I grant you, I don’t hear the half of it, and I disregard what I do hear.” 

“You know about my family, though,” he challenges, and feels a spark of anger. 

She shakes her head. “Only very little. That the Argents were once very prominent in the field, yes, and that your numbers had dwindled over time, that your corporation is almost entirely focussed on legitimate business now, and you, you personally, stripped the hunters out of your organization after your father passed. And Jake told me the last bit just three days ago.” She discards the hairpin that she’d been playing with, dropping it in their bag of wrappers and napkins. 

“It never occurred to you to wonder why I would do that?” 

Noor fixes him with a level look, her brown eyes clear and focused. “You showed up on time, fought hard and well, and never tried to get my kit off or to shoot me in the back. Any questions I might have had about you were answered by your actions. I didn’t feel a need to dwell on details.” 

Chris sags back against the side of the bed, and rubs his face again. “I’m sorry,” he mutters, half into his palm. “I’m sorry, I just. This conversation’s been all about... about why. And there are a lot of whys in my past, in my family, that don’t have enough good answers. “ He lowers his palm, tips his head back to stare at the ceiling. “You have to forgive me a little suspicion. I don’t even know what, why you came here.” 

“Snipers make good money, and Jake can afford to pay.” He sees her shrug as he brings his head back down. 

“No, here.” He gestures at the room. “I expected you to be long gone, like everyone else.” 

“Oh.” One dimple flashes in her cheek. “I was hoping to get your kit off.” 

It’s the second time she’s surprised an honest-to-god belly laugh out of him, and it feels fantastic, it feels honest and free. He tilts his head back again and sighs. 

"You picked a hell of a topic as a lead-in," he says. 

He can see her smile, a little sadly, from the corner of his eye. "You picked the topic," she points out. "I just brought the dinner."

He stares up at the ceiling tiles, lets his eyes follow the molding around the room and back. She's right; he acknowledges it with a short nod. "Guess I did."

"It's all right to want to talk." 

There’s so much, so much that he never said, so many questions he never asked until it was too late; there are other things that he said and can’t take back. It’s always regret, it seems like, what he did and what he didn’t do alike. He turns his gaze back to Noor, watches her for a moment, caught in the directness, the warmth, of her eyes. 

“We could be done talking,” he says, and his voice is as rusty as his skill at this, what this suddenly is. He feels hot all over, his heart thudding loud. 

“Is that what you want?” Noor moves and is abruptly closer, on her knees, one slim brown hand coming to rest on his chest. 

He nods and she’s the one that pulls him in, pulls him forward for the kiss, her fist tightening on his shirtfront as he leans into it. Her tongue sweeps over his lips and it feels like a match being struck, like his blood is gunpowder; he’s tugging her into his lap, they’re kicking over the wine and the water, he has his hands buried in her hair and it feels good, it feels so fucking good. 

Can’t blame adrenaline, can’t say this is anything other than exactly what it is: Chris wants her, he wants Noor with a fierceness that is as unexpected as it is sincere. They yank at each other’s clothing, buttons and zippers, buckles and laces; Noor’s gun hits the floor with a thud, her boots crash against the door when she kicks them off. It’s fast and it’s slow motion all at once, like falling into deep water. 

He’s way too far over forty to be fucking on a hotel room floor but the thought is only a flicker before it’s gone, gone when he lies back, takes Noor’s hips in his hands and pulls her up onto his mouth. The taste of her pussy floods over his tongue and he can’t help sighing, can’t help how fucking good she tastes, how good she feels. It’s been so long and she’s so hot and wet, making angry little noises as she grabs at his hair, as she grinds down on his face like she owns it. 

When she comes her nails bite into his forearms, he’s going to carry eight bloody crescent moons away from here, if nothing else; he has the vague thought that maybe they’ll scar, that maybe he’ll remember this on his skin instead of just in his thoughts. He thinks maybe he’d wear them proudly, with his sleeves rolled up, for everyone to see. 

“Stay with me, look at me,” Noor murmurs, shimmying down his body, kissing her own taste off his lips, biting at him until he comes up growling, flipping her over and pushing her thighs apart with his weight. She laughs, she scratches his shoulders and kisses him again. “There you are,” she says, “look at you, you bloody gorgeous thing.”

“Isn’t that supposed to be my line?” Chris asks, out of breath, and she slaps his hip. 

“Don’t be sexist. I can call you beautiful if I like.” 

It’s a moment too much, too intimate for all that they’re lying pressed naked together, that Chris’ hard cock is slick against the sweaty crease of her thigh and he still has the wet of her pussy on his chin; it’s intimate like sharing secrets and death. Chris props himself on his elbows, runs the backs of his knuckles over her cheeks. Her eyes flutter closed when he kisses her. 

Noor throws a hand out and feels for something—her jacket, it turns out—she turns her face from him for a moment while she fumbles open an inner pocket. She presses a condom into his hand a second later, and he breathes a laugh into her shoulder; he stops laughing when she takes it back from him and takes care of the issue herself. 

It’s so familiar and so strange both, the touch of a woman’s hand on his cock, that first clutch of her body, the feel of a soft, smooth belly pushing up against his. Part of him wants to catalogue the differences, the part of him that’s still thinking, but when she rocks her hips, when she skates her teeth over his throat, thought burns away. He grabs at her wrists, testing; she lets him pin her with a wide, challenging grin. 

Chris can’t look away. 

The sweep of her brows, the sweat on her collarbones, the swell of her lips. Her hair has come down, spilling ink dark over the carpet, and he lets go one hand to get ahold of it, to make a fist and pull her mouth back to his. She makes a sound against his cheek that makes him flush, and he tries it again, pulls her hair and she repeats it, that moaning growl. His whole body tightens; he answers her with his own snarl of pleasure. 

He doesn’t know how long it lasts, he loses track, loses time in the pitch of their bodies together, in heat of her mouth and the flex of her cunt. It slows down, it dissolves; when he comes it’s like the tension he’s been carrying turns liquid, and evaporates in the heat. 

They lie together for a while before separating, Noor stroking the length of his spine with gentle, firm fingertips. He pillows his cheek on her shoulder, breathing in the sweaty spice of her skin, one hand still tangled in the silk of her hair, until practical necessity forces movement. They tidy up, their bodies as well as the floor, partially reclothing before sliding side by side into the bed. 

Chris finds he’s relieved that he doesn’t have to say it, to ask her to stay. 

In bed she turns on her side, face toward Chris, toward the window; there’s just enough light to make her eyes shine. She reaches across the space between them, threads her fingers with his. 

“I want to see you again,” Noor says, running the tip of her thumb across his palm. The touch makes his skin prickle, his stomach twist tight, and he can’t suppress a shiver. She does it again. “I want to know you,” she adds, just above a whisper. 

Chris looks down at their entwined fingers, rubs his own thumb up and down hers. She chuffs a soft sound, not quite a laugh. “You’re ticklish?” he asks, his voice low and dry. A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. “Your _hands_ are ticklish?” 

She pulls her hand back from his, holds it against her chest. “Let’s do this again,” she repeats. “WIthout the... rest of it. You can find all the places I’m ticklish.” 

He has to close his eyes a moment, breathe in deep and hold it, before he reclaims her hand. “I don’t know.”

“I’m not saying plan a date tomor—”

“No. I don’t know how. Without the rest of it.” He squeezes her fingers, maybe too tight, but she just meets his eyes, direct like she’s been since the first moment. “Noor, I don’t know how you can get to know me, I’m not even sure—” 

“What?” She gives her head the tiniest shake. “Logistics? Timing?” 

“How do you get to know someone who isn’t even sure who.” Chris stops, looks away, back down at their hands. “I used to be very certain of who I was. Am.” 

“Was, I suspect.” Noor’s voice is warm, without a hint of judgment. “If you were the same at forty as you were at twenty, I don’t think I’d want to know you anyway.” 

“You’re more optimistic than I am.” 

“I can afford to be, in this.” Noor’s lashes dip, fanning dark below her eyes for a moment. Chris is struck by how beautiful they are, and by how absurd the thought is. Eyelashes.

“I don’t understand you,” he says. “I can’t figure this out.” 

He can see the moment her confidence falters, he can see the flash of hurt he’s caused; she draws her hand from his again and sits up. “That’s why I was hoping for more than one night,” she says, and her smile is not the wide honest one, or even the cool polite one. He sits up himself, and glances away. 

She keeps her back to him as she pulls on her panties, takes her shirt back off to put on her bra. There’s a birthmark on the wing of her shoulder blade, about the size of a dime, not quite perfectly round. He hadn’t seen it before, hadn’t really seen her back at all, before. There’s a set of claw marks below it, aged to thin white lines. 

“Stay,” he says. “Please.” 

Noor turns, shirt in hand. She takes a deep, visible breath. “Why?” 

“I’m sorry.” 

“Why?” she repeats. 

“Why am I sorry, or why do I want you to stay?” Chris scratches his jaw, he shrugs, but the words come easy all of a sudden, and he’s able to meet her eye. “I’m sorry that I’m an idiot. I want you to stay because I hope I’m not that much of an idiot.” 

Noor presses her lips together, and shakes her head before dropping the shirt. “I hope so too.” 

He’s slept alone for over two years and it doesn’t come back easily, his body’s memory fights the shape of her limbs, the tangle of her long hair, the sound of her breathing. She’s also clearly unused to sharing; she takes all the pillows, most of the covers, and keeps elbowing him. He startles awake over and over, remembering, as dawn's light begins to glow behind the curtains. He can do this, he thinks. He can do this, not only now, not only _this_ , but all of it, to choose a path instead of carrying a mountain. He can begin again.

“Go back to sleep,” Noor mumbles into his shoulder. She shifts, fits against his side; his arm comes down comfortably across her back. 

“Okay,” Chris says to the morning. “Shh. Okay.”

**Author's Note:**

> for robanybody, who knows why.
> 
> with many thanks to aerographie for the read-through. 
> 
> title and epigraph from "A Fate's Brief Memoir" by Agha Shahi Ali.


End file.
